Slingshot AI, a mental health startup founded by Casper co-founder Neil Parikh and AI researcher Daniel Cahn, has raised $93 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Radical Ventures.
Its first product, an AI chatbot named Ash, was developed over 18 months with 50,000 beta users and aims to address the shortage of mental health providers. Ash is designed to help people with issues like anxiety, depression, or social isolation, while encouraging them to build real-world relationships rather than becoming dependent on the AI.
Unlike most AI models, Ash is programmed to challenge users when necessary to avoid reinforcing delusions and will end sessions once sufficient progress is made. It uses a foundation model fine-tuned on therapy data from dozens of approaches, combined with reinforcement learning with human feedback.
Investors see AI as key to scaling mental health support given the shortage of trained professionals. While previous studies on AI therapy tools have shown mixed results, Slingshot plans to collect ongoing feedback, and Ash is currently free, with monetization planned later.
https://www.emergingtechbrew.com/stories/2025/07/31/slingshot-ai-therapy-chatbot-a16z